


The Couple's Masks

by clearinghouse



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bunny POV, Drama, Established Relationship, Halloween, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 14:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clearinghouse/pseuds/clearinghouse
Summary: An underground vault’s cryptic puzzle thrusts a fresh challenge upon Raffles and Bunny. It will be a test of their logic, communication, and trust.





	1. Thirteen Dice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [equestrianstatue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/gifts).



> This is a Yuletide gift for equestrianstatue, who wanted to see some of the darker elements of the relationship between Raffles and Bunny. I hope this qualifies!

I was alone in the sitting room of yet another society gentlemen, one whose hospitality I was possibly about to tread violently on. All was dark but the flicker of the candle that I balanced in its dish. The low sconce on the wall was dusty and cold to the touch of my fingers from where I sat. My worst resentments were stewing in their bitter pot. At least I didn’t fear that anyone would return to this house to find me where I should not have been. These inhabitants had gone away to see family for the week, and all other decent people were asleep or out celebrating.

These inhabitants hadn’t gone, though, without first handing over the key to the place to a friend. They wanted someone to mind the homestead and leave on lights to ward off burglars, or so they had been led to consider. The society gentleman, while at his very own party to celebrate the coming All Hallow’s Eve, and in front of my very eyes, had given his precious key to that kindly solicitous friend, A. J. Raffles.

Though I cannot claim to have a burglar’s intuition, even I could see that the scheme, whatever it was, had begun with a blatant folly. In fact, I did tell Raffles that he would naturally be suspected, should anything be missed from the house. 

He, in his typical fashion, did not deny that there was a scheme, when I thus pressed him. Instead, he flippantly put off my worries. While the place was in such good care as his, he said, nothing will be missed. He told me nothing else.

For a couple of days, I knew no detail of the inevitable crime that I could see him weaving in his mind, even while we smoked cigarettes in his Albany rooms. I had grown accustomed to this sort of treatment from him. The lessons of many capers had taught me that to force for his confidence was only to earn a teasing jibe or worse, and so I had to let it pass. 

Ultimately, my ignorance changed nothing; regardless of his attitude, I was his man. My faith was in him, not in the unknowable facts of the case. We would fight or fly together, come what may. He hadn’t yet given me any cause to regret the commitment, and I would not be either so foolish or so petty as to think that his habit of secretiveness qualified. If he chose not to tell me his plan, then he must have thought he had a sound reason for doing so, and that would have to be good enough for me.

At last, on that final day of the tenth month of the year, and without changing our dining tailcoats, Raffles had taken me, arm in arm, towards the house that had been so unhesitatingly entrusted to him. Only under that starless nighttime sky did his lips loosen.

“There’s something awfully curious about that house and the next one down the road,” he remarked at the time. “Outwardly and inwardly they’re nothing alike, except that there’s a distinctive similarity shared by a certain light fixture on a wall in each. I couldn’t help noticing it in the second, over the rim of a wine glass at the party. The second sconce bore marks like its twin, and is equally as ancient. I dared give the second one a look-over, and a push, when no one was looking. Of course, you remember when I put you to distracting the cavalry with conversation? The ornament was devilishly heavy, but imagine my delight when there was a bit of a rotational give and catch to it, like one expects from a fastened lock.”

“Did you ever examine the first one, also?”

“My dear rabbit, you jump right to it!” he exclaimed, and I wasn’t sure how to take the bouyant lightness of his comment. “That’s what we’ll be trying tonight, and I’ll be dashed if there isn’t a connection between the two fixtures.”

“But what does it matter, if two wall fixtures are related?”

He had lowered his lids at me. “I’m not only saying that there is a figurative connection between them. Rather, it’s a physical one I’m after.”

I had gasped at the mere suggestion. “A tunnel!”

“Better yet, some medieval refuge, or hideaway, and some grand mechanism at the bottom of it all! Both houses are older than the names of the gentlemen in them. We’ll chance on it that the inmates haven’t tumbled to the secret already, if indeed a secret there is.”

Though the flimsy and outlandish idea should have instantly struck me as entirely preposterous, it failed to do so. I was only a little doubtful. Considering the power of Raffles’s personality, it’s a wonder I wasn’t immediately as excited as he. That was often the case while I was in Raffles’s infectiously excited company, yet on this occasion the premise of the adventure was extremely absurd.

Upon arriving, Raffles smoothly shoved in the homeowner’s own key. Straight away he lit a candle, with the natural air of someone who might have lived there, and brought me through the castle’s dark halls to the suspicious lamp.

“Stay with this sconce, Bunny,” he said, passing me the candle. “Starting in twenty minutes, give the thing a jerk or a shove, every now and again. I’ll be on the other side, doing the same. We’re bound to hit upon the right track sooner or later. If nothing happens for three quarters of an hour, we’ll call it quits, and have a laugh about it at the Albany—or, I’ll need a rescue, and you’ll have to tell our new neighbours that you thought you saw a burglar sneak in. Otherwise, stay put here, and don’t move an inch.”

He never told me how he got into the other house, which I knew to still be occupied by a widow and her household of staff. I can only imagine that his pumps had been shoved into his pockets and an old window had been jimmied open when the twenty minutes were up. Marking the time with my pocket watch, I dutifully ignored the absurdity of my position and pushed on the weighty sconce as commanded. I subjected it to a pull, a bump, a twist at its handle-like feature, and then, when those actions failed me, a rotation to the left.

It took a great initial push, but that was all. After a second’s hitch, it spun remarkably easily round a quarter-circle, and was fixed into place, like a key turned in its lock. 

Astonishment took me for its own. I flinched back. The movement of the sconce on a concealed axis had been done with a mechanical precision that had startled me. Suddenly the entire house took on a very different colour to me. It grew secretive, and sinister, and full of some dangerous, unspoken promise. Raffles hadn’t been seeing adventure where none existed. 

Besides the click of the sconce, there was also the loud, portentous noise of something sliding. 

I glanced around, and to my right I saw it: a rug on the floor had collapsed and sunk into the ground. Some of the slats of the floor had been pulled away; a set of wooden stairs descended into a very tight corridor lined with stone, not wide enough for the width of two people. The corridor led to an impenetrable abyss, which haunted one’s sensibilities like a secret passage out of a Poe story. 

My heart hammered. The passageway frightened me, yet my curiosity thrummed also. Without going very far, I took a couple of steps forward, down only a few of the steps, and waved my candle about the musty darkness. I was trying to look down the dark hall, but my light was hardly sufficient. 

But then the stairs beneath me collapsed, and ignominiously I fell flat to the ground with them. 

I recovered in time to tilt my head up and watch, in perfect horror, as the slats of the floor slid sharply back into place!

The gaslight of the house was brutally killed, save what few tiny rays pierced the trapdoor’s edges, and what feeble illumination the flicker of my candle threw onto the black darkness of the surfaces of the stones of the walls. The stench of the age of that shadowy corridor swamped the air around me. I didn’t want to think about the scattering of little wet puddles that I had fallen into. There was no way out, but forward into the unknown. 

I was trapped!

A long, terrible moment was spent in the useless throes of panic. My hands and knees shook. I struggled to rise. After that, I didn’t waste any more of my time. It was obvious that there was no point in trying to scramble up the smooth walls to scratch at the closed ceiling. I did, however, feel all around the floor, praying to find some mechanism to raise the steps again. To my profound dismay, there were only strange orifices along the edges of the corridor, where wall met floor, at a regular distance from each other. These were implements for ventilation, I supposed, or drainage. 

With no other course to take, my breath loud and rapid, I couldn’t have stayed where I was while keeping a sane head. I couldn’t only stand onto two heavy feet and move on.

The hallway ended shortly and cruelly in something resembling a great mahogany door, which extended from floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall. A stick of bamboo with a top like a basket was hanging off the left wall, close to the door. Spiders’ webs hung at the corners of every small splinter that would support them. The door, if it could be called that, was devoid of any handle, knob, or lock.

“Bunny!” a voice echoed ghoulishly as I approached. 

I stopped, alarmed. I turned around, and looked all about me; but I was alone.

“Is that you?” The echoes resounded at a low volume, though harshly. They were coming from the pipes.

The sound of his voice bouncing about the walls in this lonesome dungeon had startled me, like an abrupt draught of the outside world’s air felt in the still depths of an abandoned castle. I began to smile foolishly, feeling half-saved to be joined by no more than the sound of his voice. “Raffles!” 

“That is you!” The tone of his shout immediately turned to irritation. “You idiot!” 

Instantly, the draught of fresh air turned cold. My brief surge of relief slipped into the very worst of feelings, shame and indignation chief among them.

“Couldn’t you guess that there would be a trap, a danger? Well, somehow you set off the trap. You went into the tunnel, didn’t you? Even though I told you not to move an inch!”

His accusations did hit me, but what hit me far more was a sick, bitter rage to match his own. This was very unfair of him. Though I may have disobeyed his very vague, loosely-given order, he couldn’t blame me for what had happened. My happiness upon hearing his familiar voice intertwined sickly with a frigid bitterness. “You didn’t tell me anything!” I retorted. “You could have warned me, if you knew there was a danger like this! How could anyone have guessed that a tunnel could seal itself in this way?”

“The power of the trick of the two sconces should have been enough to warn you!”

As if he honestly believed that! “No, it wasn’t enough! You should have told me what danger there was! And how did you know it yourself?”

There was a lengthy silence. “I didn’t know for certain,” he replied, somewhat more softly. “But I didn’t tell you of danger because the danger isn’t as great as it seems, though it sounds as if you were counting us as doomed men already. And I didn’t tell you of what little danger there was, because I didn’t want you to suffer from cold feet. The less you have to worry about, my dear rabbit, the better off we both are, as a rule!”

“Really!” I scoffed. “Was that true tonight, as well?”

He scoffed back. “We’ll see! You barging in before you’re up to bat is only a minor setback. I’m right where I wanted to be, and I wouldn’t choose to walk off in any case. So put your trust in me, and be satisfied with that, because we still may have a grand over ahead of us, and I mean to make my score. If I meet with any more setbacks, it’ll only be on account of you losing your nerves!”

That was too much. Rather than being at all allayed by his unconvincing reassurances, I was seething with irritation. My lingering fit of panic now felt a small bother in comparison to the sting of his small opinion of me. I could have deluded myself into expecting Raffles would be sorry to know that I had fallen in with him. Evidently, I didn’t count for that much in his perspective. Without answering him, I stormed off.

The light splashing of my footsteps must have reached my partner, yet there was no shout to call me back. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he didn’t have to. Where, after all, was I supposed to go? I needed him, now more than ever, if in fact he was somehow aware of this wretched cavern’s secrets, and our means of escape. He didn’t seem to believe that we were trapped.

What was this place, anyway? Raffles seemed determined not to tell me, and I wasn’t about to ask him—

The subtle noise of a sliding mechanism from far away broke the careful silence that had fallen. 

It was a terribly, deceptively small noise, yet it stopped me, and almost my heart. I had only gone a fraction of the way down the hall. I looked about me, but saw no change in the door, the bamboo stick, the stones in the walls, or anything at all. Even so, as soon as I stepped back towards the great door, there was the noise again. I glanced at my feet; the colour of the ground that I had just stepped off seemed a little different than elsewhere, for a small square space of about one foot by one foot. It was hard to see in the light of the flame, but I was sure that it was painted blue.

“Bunny!” Raffles shouted. “Whatever you just did, do it again!”

There was a tiny thrill deep inside me, to hear Raffles asking for my assistance with such a keen sharpness, but I didn’t let myself savour the feeling yet. My petulant mood was supposed to be in full bore. “What?” I yelled irritably. “Why?”

“The door in front of me began to open, that’s why!”

I reeled. As quickly as that, my petulance met its match. It is a silly thing to admit, but the mystery of the place and Raffles’s need of me combined to move me, despite my hurt. I stepped on the blue space, and on this occasion I at last noticed how the square of ground moved down uniformly in a strange manner when pressed. “It’s some sort of pressure plate I’m standing on!”

A few seconds passed before I heard Raffles speak again. “Good! Step off now!”

The sour note playing inside me was not at all gone, but I did as he bade me. The low noise of the far-away sliding was perversely quiet. It was at this moment that I noticed a second square, bearing a faded red shade, painted onto one of the wall’s stones at eye-level, directly above the ground’s blue square.

“That shut my gate again, all right,” Raffles called out. “I was hoping it would do something more, if not keep the gate up.”

I hardly heard him. Without telling Raffles, I tried the red square.

The unsympathetic stairway and trapdoor that had betrayed me had an abrupt change of heart: the stairs rose, and the trapdoor receded into God knows where. I could see the welcome rays of glorious gaslight of the house raining down into the corridor’s other end. I was free to escape! It seemed too good to be true. Immediately I feared that taking my hand away from the red square would cease to activate its arcane effect, as was apparently the case with the blue square’s mechanism. However, when I ceased to push on the red square, all my pitiful expectations were defied, because the trapdoor remained open. 

“You found the fire escape, did you?” The echoed words of Raffles were oddly sardonic and unimpressed. He must have heard my trapdoor open.

His apathetic mood missed me by miles. “Yes! Pushing on a red square on the wall caused it to open!” I exclaimed. “This is the way out! Do you have a red square on your side, Raffles?”

“I seem to recall seeing something of the sort.”

“What? Can’t you look and see—?” I cut off my own asinine remark. No, he could not look and see. He had gone past the mahogany door—the one that I had just opened and shut for him. I shuddered as a macabre, grotesque realisation dawned on me.

“You’d have to let me out, first,” Raffles replied in the darkest of playful tones.

I must own that my legs shook. I swallowed loudly, to moisten my dry throat. The sinister element of this strange dungeon, which the red square’s gift had done something to diminish in my mind, was now doubled what it was before. Fright struck me with a greater power than it had when I had first fallen in. The perverse responsibility of my position was almost painful to comprehend. Could I chance to hope that there was also a red square, I wondered, in whatever cell I’d locked him in?

A long, horrified moment later, the mahogany door on my side of the corridor began to ascend.

There wasn’t any note of fear or doubt from Raffles, whose measured enthusiasm at our ghastly circumstances startled me. “Good! That’s the sound of your ticket in, I fancy? Holler when you’ve gone inside. I’ll step off my own square, then. There ought to be some safeguard in place so the door can’t fall on you, but there’s no need to take any chances. What light have you got with you?”

I stuttered. “A—A candle!”

“Use it on your tiki, then, if you’ve got one. It’ll do you better.”

I hesitated. Close spaces did not necessarily distress me on their own, but this was a very foul, dead place, and I longed to be quit of it. My ears caught or invented threatening creaks in the walls all around me, reminding me of the patter of rats. Who was to say what unseen mechanisms awaited us further on? Not very far behind me, freedom beckoned, seeming a come-to-life stairway to heaven out of a stifling nightmare.

If I stepped on the blue square again, Raffles would know that I was walking off. He would have to back out as well, and possibly we would return to this tunnel at some later date, or possibly not. I felt it was well within my rights to leave. I had stumbled into this place unprepared, and in the manner of a fool, because Raffles had not confided all his suspicions with me. No one, especially not he, could hold it against me if I chose not to seal myself inside the thick air of a dungeon’s cell, with an exit controlled only on his end.

That thought arrested my attention. Only I could release him from where he was, presently; in a moment, should I go forward, the reverse would also be true. He was trusting me, without condition. Could I do the same? Did that prospect frighten me? It did stir some great and disturbing feeling in me, but it was a feeling far from fright.

I still did not even know the purpose of this place, or what prize would be found at its fateful centre. As I’ve said, that was often how matters stood between Raffles and me. Raffles was a congenital liar, whether the lies were blatant or of omission. He only told me what he thought I needed to know, and too many times he outright manipulated my actions—and yet, though I sometimes made myself forget it, I knew that he never failed me, and never gave up on me. 

It wasn’t in my nature to give up on him.

While I silently considered all this, Raffles was saying nothing. He didn’t try to convince me to stay. He neither berated me nor cajoled me. With the same trademark patience with which he shaved a skeleton key or drilled around a lock, he was waiting for that critical moment when the ball flew one way or the other, close or wide. He was waiting for me. His silence spoke to me eloquently: whatever I chose to do next, he wouldn’t argue my decision. 

My trembling fists clenched. My devoted heart ached. I should have hated him, but alas I couldn’t, not when he was so sorely dear to me, and a little good to me, in his own way.

I can only guess what thoughts were running his head when, at last, I trudged forward. I can hardly say what thoughts ran through my own.

The bamboo stick that I took with me had a wick that led to some reserve of fuel. Moreover, its thick wood was a welcome weight in my hand, and the animal satisfaction of bearing a useful tool reassured me by degrees. I used the flame of the candle to light the fuel, and then deserted the house’s weak candle to burn alone in the corridor.

I moved forward.

The new room I came upon was a very small space, like an empty horse’s stall. My attention went immediately to scan the floor, the walls, and the ceiling for any telltale shapes and colours. I counted six squares painted on the stones of the floor; there were four in a vertical row, and an additional square at either side of the second nearest me. The squares were all blue, but each had a unique number of white dots engraved in it, between one and six.

Standing before me was another massive door, the same as the first.

“I’m in,” I called.

It might have been my imagination, but I thought Raffles was a bit slow to respond. In my vanity, I fancied he was marvelling at me, and my decision to remain with him. In any case, I don’t know what else it could have been that kept him. It was a few seconds before the door at my heel came down, sealing me unapologetically in that enclosed space. “What do you see?” he asked.

The room was much too small, and that alone threatened to shock me into panic once more. Resolutely, I thought of my nearby friend—my pillar of strength—and shook off terror’s grip. Both of my hands were wrapped like irons around the tiki, at first; as soon as I had mastered myself enough, I held the stick with only one hand. “The same sort of door,” I answered, fighting to keep myself steady, “and six blue squares on the floor, numbered one to six by dots. There are more of the pipe-holes at the level of the floor.”

“Anything else?”

“No, I’m fairly certain not.” Trying to be as thorough as possible in my information, I checked and rechecked every corner. It was no comfort that there wasn’t any red square in this room. “Only pebbles and dust. But tell me, what do you see, Raffles?”

Half of me didn’t expect my habitually close friend to condescend to answer, but he did, without delay. “Mine’s a little more interesting than yours,” he sang glibly. “Besides the one blue square that let you in, there’s a plate on a pedestal.” There was a brief pause. “It holds thirteen six-sided dice. What a coincidence that is! I have some dice, and you have the layout of a dice on your floor! Do you suppose they’re related?” Raffles’s laugh bounced around through the hidden tubes in our walls. 

“Do you mean, you have real playing dice in a bowl?”

“That’s right, old chap! They’re such normal-looking things, too. I say, they must be ancient, yet they wouldn’t look at all out of place at the Albany. Made out of bone, or I’m much mistaken. Ha! To find them here, of all places, and presented so neatly! Is this a puzzle, then, just to give a pair of burglars some entertainment on their way in? Capital! What a treat it is for us.”

I was too stunned to catch Raffles’s boyish enthusiasm. To find inviting playing dice in this unwelcoming dungeon was too grotesque to be believed. Who could credit that such a childish dungeon like this had been made, to any purpose? Certainly, we’d never stumbled into a morbid welcome like this before. And yet the evidence agreed with Raffles. The dice signified a riddle, designed to test strangers like us.

“Gives the impression of being a game for two to win, doesn’t it? Whatever the problem is supposed to be, we’ll have to arrive at its solution together, using your parts and mine. I’ll consider what the dice could mean. Why don’t you walk around on your six squares to start with, and see if anything happens?”

I was hesitant. “But mightn’t the wrong answer set off a trap?”

Raffles laughed again. He was greatly enjoying himself. “Well, that’s playing the game, anyway! There’s nothing to fear, Bunny. Whoever built this passage had some fun in mind, not malice. No, I don’t think there will be any punishment. Of course, I doubt that the answer to the riddle is merely to step on one of the squares in particular, but we’d be perfect asses if we assumed it couldn’t be that simple.”

That was easy for him to say. This place had shown itself capable of anything, and the six squares were more ominous in my eyes than anything else thus far. It wouldn’t have been too extraordinary for a stone to fall on my head if I only stepped on the notched squares at random. Nevertheless, I managed to swallow my horrors and take my tentative first steps on the squares, to no effect. I tried them all in sequence, and stepped about at random. There was a slight sense of depression to plates as I set my own weight on each, but that was all. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Nothing,” I told him.

He didn’t ask me what I’d tried. He didn’t ask me if I was sure. “That’s fine,” he replied, “that only means we’ll have to play the game as it was meant to be played. It must be a sequence of steps that you’ve got to take, and it’s these dice that know it. That second part is quite up to me. Now then, how to make them talk?”


	2. Six Spaces

Raffles was quiet for a long time. Whatever method he was trying with the dice on his side of this sombre, deathly-stale corridor, it didn’t involve me.

There was very little for me to do, in that enclosed, empty space. I tried arbitrary sequences of steps, both in earnest and as an exercise to distract myself from my miserable surroundings. Nothing happened. I was too wary of the filth of the floor to sit for a rest.

A few times, Raffles broke his silence to ask me to try some combination of numbers. None of his suggestions rang true. Then he would return, undefeated, to his obscure errand, and leave me with no task but to wait or to think in a vain of a solution on my own. 

“I might be able to help,” I called to Raffles eventually, though the meaning behind the riddle was entirely unclear to me, and would not yield to any construction I made of it.

“How’s that? Have you got a hint for me?”

“No,” I said, “but if you told me the truth about this place, maybe I’ll come up with one. Where are we?”

The pause he returned to me was mercifully brief. “All right, I’ll tell you,” he said, and his voice took a dive down into sweet, enticing notes of sentiment. “Will you forgive me for not telling you sooner, Bunny, and for what I said earlier? You were right, I should have been clearer about the adversaries we’re coming up against. There was really no reason for me to keep the facts to myself—though the truth is fiendishly complicated, and very uncertain still. Knowing what I know may only serve to trouble you unnecessarily.”

I’ve heard those same words in that same consoling vein more times than I can count. They went through one ear and out the other, unheeded by my mind, if not by my heart. I wasn’t interested in hearing his excuses again, because his reasons were of no consequence. Our earlier fits aside, I had long ago learned not to bite the hand that feeds me. “Just tell me,” I shouted. The beating sense of hurt pride in my breast hadn’t gone away, but in light or in dark, I was his man. 

See, I’m not ungrateful for him. On the contrary, I worship him, and I always counted myself fortunate to be in association with him. The clever, winsome Raffles was generous to share his adventures, his plunder, and sometimes his rooms with me. If he was a liar as well, and at times given to bursts of vicious emotion, then that was only fair. Lord knows I wasn’t born a paragon of mankind.

Besides that, although I would never say it out loud, I knew in my deepest soul that Raffles wasn’t entirely in the wrong to keep me in the metaphorical dark. I looked down at my own shivering fingers, the undeniable evidence of my own lack of nerves. If my companion didn’t confide in me as one would a true accomplice, whose fault could that be but my own? 

There was a hesitation from Raffles, and then he continued. “It’s the hideaway of two of our forefathers,” he said. “No one alive remembers it, but these two houses once belonged to a pair of criminals who ran an operation here for some number of years. There are mentions of them in the criminal records—I looked into it after I noticed the two sconces. This is an abandoned den for thieves, Bunny, though a very singular one; and it’s for us to see if there are any rags or riches left inside. What a sporting spirit the original owners must have had, to leave their place open to the enterprising public of the future!”

I was glad that Raffles was finally telling me something, even though he was clearly leaving some details out. For one reason, there was nothing especially frightening or complicated in that story, as he’d indicated. There was no earthly reason, for another, why a thieves’ hideout should feature an arbitrary puzzle as its lock—but I also wondered if it was a thieves’ hideout at all. “Open to the enterprising public?” I repeated, dubiously. “But how do you know that this place was only meant for thieves? Couldn’t any group of people find the way in, as we did?”

“Who else but burglars would find this hole, and play this game? No, this can only be a place for criminals,” Raffles said, “I’ve no doubt of that.” However, there was a fresh tone of uncertainty to the claim. 

I huffed. “Mackenzie from the Yard might play the game, if he ever noticed those arcane sconces as you did!”

“Yes, he certainly might,” Raffles said thoughtfully.

“Him and a league of constables could swarm the place in a minute,” I added, smirking at my own notion of a dozen Scotland Yard men contriving to cheat their way through the game’s checkpoints by force of numbers. “That would throw a spanner into this bizarre puzzle.”

“Hold on, one moment,” Raffles said, in a distracted fashion, and for a short while, there was nothing more from him. He had come up with an idea, or had just discovered something on his end; either way, keeping me informed was not his priority—until, suddenly, I heard from his excited voice again. “Bunny!” Raffles chirped, “I have excellent news.”

“What is it?”

“You’ve bowled it out—clean knocked out the middle stump! These people did find a way to keep the innocents out. This puzzle is a test to filter out everyone but the thieves, because it’s a thief’s trick! Seven of the thirteen dice are loaded. They always fall the same!”

I blinked twice at the information. That was clever. I hadn’t thought of that.

“It’s three ones, two twos, and two threes,” Raffles said.

“But that’s a string of numbers without meaning. Could it be the sequence?” 

“It could be, except that we have no guarantee of what order the numbers belong in.”

The order that he had said them in was better than nothing. “I’ll try it, anyway!”

“By all means,” Raffles replied, “step lively!”

I stepped on the one-dot square, and dutifully hopped, like my namesake.

Suddenly, at the third push on the one-dotted plate, there was an audible click in the walls, and the sound of a not-too-distant sliding mechanism. 

I froze. Surely that couldn’t have already been—?

“Ah! That’s the ticket!” Raffles cried. “You’ve done it, Bunny! The second gate is up!” He was to the moon with delight. This gruesome dungeon charmed him as it could charm no one else. His sparkling voice threw the gloom of the puddles and the spider-webs into brilliant contrast.

I was much less ecstatic. It had only taken the three consecutive steps on the one-dot square to open the door. That was an absurdly simple pattern, one that I could have easily tried on my own. I was too embarrassed to tell Raffles.

Soon enough, the door in front of me rose, as well, by steps unseen and unheard. There was no pausing by me to dither this time. I waved my lit stick into the new darkness, and ventured forth into the puzzle’s second phase without a qualm. 

“I’ve got nothing in my new cell,” Raffles said. His echoes were much louder now than previously. “Ah, except,” he added, “there’s a recess in the wall, and a crank beneath it.”

“There’s a recess and a crank in my wall, too,” I said, slowly. “There’s also a very small recess in the middle of the door. The recess in the door is coloured blue.”

“Ah, yes, I see that on mine. Bunny, it looks the perfect size for three of those dice. Those might be our keys.”

I was startled by the ominous idea. “But surely this is to do with the crank, not the doors,” I exclaimed, “since I don’t have any dice!”

“That’s easily taken care of,” Raffles said. “We each have three holes, and I have thirteen pegs at my service. That gives us a good deal more than we need, wouldn’t you say? I’ll give you the three you need.”

“But how will they come to me?” Yet the answer suggested itself to me before I had finished asking the question. “The recess in the wall—and the crank?”

“Only one way to find out!”

A few seconds later, I heard a sound like the grinding of mechanical gears. My ears followed the noise, and soon I observed as two pebbles were conveyed into place into the recess above the crank.

“Did you receive my gifts?” Raffles laughed. 

It was a childishly simple mechanism, and yet I was amazed to see with my own eyes a couple of stones that had, only moments ago, been in Raffles’s palm. Were we really so near one another? “Yes!” I exclaimed, more thrilled and delighted by this small gain—and by this very superfluous physical proof of Raffles’s partnership—than I had been by anything else all night.

“Then it’s as I thought. The dice will be ours to share. The only difficulty is that, like an ass, I didn’t bring those dice with me!”

That amused me splendidly. A small, disbelieving smile curved my lips. My mood had suddenly risen to a wonderful height. “You didn’t leave them in the other room?”

“Like a proper sportsman!” he boasted. “Put them back right where I found them, and I was sure it was passing a test to do so. It serves me right that I flunked the real one, when I knew that this hole was built specifically with thieves in mind. Of course, I ought to have guessed I would have to take the pot!”

Therefore we were compelled to backtrack for the dice on his side. He activated his square, so that I could cross back and hop three times on the one-dotted square, so that he could return to the previous room. After that he signalled to me to go forward with the raising of my door, and when I signalled to him he allowed it to glumly drop more. 

That ominous drop almost ruined my spirits again. To bolster my courage once more, however, I only wanted to think of Raffles and his close proximity. With every step we had made through each awful chamber, I could feel his feet walking in pattern with mine. Though we couldn’t see each other, and heavy walls kept us apart, we were working together with a marvellous fidelity. The depth of his trust in me was never as clear to me as it was at this moment. His trust endowed me with strength, and went to great lengths to restore my pride in myself.

“Let’s try the obvious,” Raffles said. “There are six dice that aren’t weighted, and six holes altogether. I’m giving you three of the honest dice. Meanwhile, I’ll try the other three.”

Three dice rolled into my cubicle. Greedily I took them. However old they might have been, the dice were all perfectly the same in appearance and size. I found myself wishing that Raffles had held onto them longer, so that some of the warmth of his palm might have lingered.

Obediently, I fit the three into the tiny hole in the door. The fit perfectly, but there was no effect.

“It’s a dud, is it?” Raffles said, after I had signalled to him. In my opinion, he was resting an unaccountably great deal of faith in the blue recesses of the doors, though admittedly I didn’t have any fresh ideas of my own to share. “Well, what else is there? There are seven cheater’s dice, and six spaces.” He turned contemplative. “I wonder if it’s all one game, and we should be building off what we learned in the previous room?”

I remembered the sequence of three hops on the single-dotted square.

Raffles, the infernal devil, must have seen into my mind. “Bunny, did you step out the entire sequence of numbers?”

I swallowed harshly. It was still awful that I hadn’t guessed at such a simple sequence, yet it would have been the ultimate foolishness to conceal the truth. “No,” I confessed.

“Was it only the first three steps that did it, after all?”

I gasped. “Yes! You’re right! How did you know?”

“Come, it’s nothing to be impressed by. It’s really quite simple. We’re playing a game that used to be famous. I, of all people, ought to be familiar with the game—it might have been my ancestor’s namesake! Have you ever heard of the dice game, raffle?”

“Raffle?” Of course, the word was familiar to my ears. I heard a derivative of that word so often in my daily life, I couldn’t help taking a sort of liking to it immediately. Besides for that, I thought I had read it mentioned in a book or a play once. “I may have heard of it somewhere.”

“As well you must have! It used to be played by swindlers and soldiers far and wide, second only to another infamous dice game, hazard, which has since become a common word with a meaning. Let me run you through the raffle beginner’s course. That’s all anyone would ever need; it’s not much of a game. Raffle is played with three dice, by at least two players, though preferably a big crowd. All the players place stakes, then they take turns throwing the dice, if the dice are shared, or each person can throw his own dice. The first to roll three of the same number takes all the spoils.”

“That’s it? The first person to roll three of the same number wins everyone’s stakes?”

“Yes, that’s all there is to it. I think that the take-all part of it was also called a raffle. Sometimes, if everyone rolled at once, then the player with the highest pair wins, if there wasn’t a raffle. Altogether boring, if I do say so myself. Not an ounce of skill to be had in the whole thing. It’s entirely up to chance—unless someone introduces some special dice. Cheating in the game was about as common as the game itself, or so I understand it. Frankly, it was the fact that these dice were loaded at all that put my mind to the game.”

“Ah, then the three ones in a row—!”

“Yes, that must have been a raffle. In fact, that was part of the test to filter out the innocents, I’ll warrant. The rules of raffle would have been an obvious guideline to guess at for anyone in our profession, in the old days.”

I shook my head to myself. “Yet it doesn’t add up. Beside the three ones, there are the four other loaded dice,” I said, “the two twos and the two threes.”

Raffles acknowledged the difficulty. “Yes, we can’t both raffle with this setup, can we? Perhaps only one person is meant to win. Here, Bunny; take the three ones. I’ll play the twos and a three.”

I watched and listened as the belted mechanism within the wall’s recess conveyed three new dice to me. These three looked identical to the first three I had been given, but I didn’t feel any need to prove to myself that they were indeed loaded, as Raffles had said. I swapped them out in the door, and informed Raffles.

There was a space of silence, then a grunt of honest irritation from Raffles. “No good?” he groused. “This has to be their gimmick! We’re certainly thinking like thieves,” he said, possibly more to himself than to me, “yet we’re still missing something.”

As for me, there was indeed one something that was very obvious but that he was not mentioning. “If this is a puzzle for two to solve,” I said, “isn’t it designed that we both should win?”

He didn’t mark the contradiction. “If one of us wins, then both win!”

“Maybe that’s not part of the rules? There’s only the two of us playing this game.”

“We can’t both win,” Raffles said with gravity.

“But we can at least tie,” I replied, with equal weight. “If we each use a one, a two, and three, the only outcome with those dice will ever be is a tie.”

“There are no ties in raffle. If there is, the players must roll again, until someone gets a raffle, or sometimes a pair. All those sets of loaded dice would do is keep us rolling against one another for all eternity. Neither of us would ever win.”

“Couldn’t that be the point, though?” I said suddenly. A thought that was entirely escaping him pressed itself mightily upon me. “Neither of us would ever win the pot, yet also neither of us would ever lose. I admit that we’d be stuck in a vicious circle of playing the same hands over and over, but maybe that’s the idea. Perhaps, in this round, when it’s you against me, it’s more important that neither of us raffles—that neither of us takes all, and leaves the other broke?”

It wasn’t the soundest pretext, though there couldn’t have been any harm in trying. Raffles, either baffled by the idea or struck by the plausibility of a suggestion offered by me, didn’t answer me.

Then, the gears began to grate again within the walls. It was a terrible, screeching noise, even knowing who it was that was setting them into motion. Within the recess, two dice appeared. Raffles didn’t have to tell me which ones they were.

I moved in sync with him, and took his donations. I placed one of my dice—a member of the three that was loaded to always land on one—into the recess. The crank was a pain to turn, but I turned it, and thereby sent Raffles the piece he needed. I now had the three dice that I wanted, and four extras besides; the rest of the dice remained in his worthy keeping.

The three dice, doomed to forever fail to raffle or pair, I placed into the door’s blue recess.

Instantly, a precious click sounded above me. The loathsome door impeding my path worked its way into its hole in the ceiling, ascending mostly out of view. 

My heart thick in my throat, I pressed bravely on. I waved my bamboo stick into the beckoning darkness—and saw an answering light across the new chamber, the glare of a dark lantern with its blinds turned out. The chamber itself had points of interest, yet I failed to observe them, just then. The dark lantern revealed no detail of its bearer; rather, it was my own series of flickers that fell upon a tall, black-coated frame, topped by the delighted, victorious face of A. J. Raffles!

Dear old Raffles cried sweetly, “Bunny!”

I had never been so glad to see him in all my days. “Raffles!” All my doubts and my fears collapsed into pieces of nothing. In that moment, the dungeon we were in was no more than a haunted house dressed up for the amusement of children. I was with my best friend again.

Raffles let his dark lantern down to thud on the dirty floor, and then, before uttering another word, ran to embrace me.

I swiftly set my medieval torch on a peg on the wall, and fell on his neck in my turn.

It was a rare sort of tender display for us to indulge in, at they very scene of the action. However, it didn’t seem so to me, just then. We had just endured the terrible experience locking each other in dreadful cells, surrounded by evil instruments doing unseen and unpredictable work. Now that the trial was over and our separation was ended, I wanted every inch of his smooth clothes and warm skin that I could get my hands on. I could feel the rush of our success coursing through him.

“I always said you were just the man for me,” he whispered. “What precious sport this was! I don’t know if I’ve ever felt a thrill quite like it. The ancient stone walls, the grinding machinery, and best of all, the delicious knowledge that one’s putting one’s life in a partner’s hands—and just think! I couldn’t have got on at all without you, especially at the end. You were brilliant. I was having us think too much like criminals. The puzzle wanted you to get us thinking like partners. It should have been obvious all along, that the trial was always meant to admit no one but two partners in crime!”

The luscious texture of his evening-wear, the rich presence of his body, and the firm touch of his firm hands on me reassured me from horrors, with a sharpness that moved me nearly to the verge of sickness. I was all but collapsed in his arms. “A. J.,” I murmured.

After a few long seconds, Raffles held me at arm’s length. His refined face was half-shadowed by the light of the bamboo stick. His handsome eyes were full of respect, and, to my surprise, remorse. “Bunny, I’m sorry for the hot way I treated you earlier. You were right. This was my scheme, and my responsibility; I should have prepared us both better for what could come. I was reckless, and proud—and, moreover, I confess I was angry that my own recklessness led to you falling in here with me.” 

There was no finer flattery in this world. I could have forgiven him of anything. “What—you were angry, about that?” I was deeply impressed, almost beyond words, which I could only stammer. “I matter—to you—that much?”

My reverent stare induced him to clap my shoulder reassuringly. “More than you can guess, old chap. I hope you saw for yourself, after what we’ve been through here tonight, that I do value you as my companion, nerves and all.” He grinned cheekily. “Those nerves of yours often have their uses, too, by and by. Why, how many times have I said that your pretty, innocent face is worth a fortune to the firm!”

There have been many instances in our long association when I’ve felt that I could have gladly died for him, so kindly did he treat me and countenance my shortcomings. This was one of those instances. I was pleasantly embarrassed, and I made to bow my head. “That’s very kind,” I mumbled. 

Gently, he took hold of my chin, and brought me up again; and a very different, very delectable and tempting kind of terror seized my heart. “I ought to add,” he whispered slowly, leaning down to my lips, “that your pretty, innocent face is worth a fortune to me.”

That I didn’t have a heart attack right then and there is evidence only of my young age. I was overwhelmed, and probably blushing like a wooed lady. Mechanical chambers and prison cells could not ruin my self-control, raise my anxiety, and fire my blood the way that Raffles could. It is an achingly extraordinary feeling, to feel that even a sliver of the devotion one spends on another is returned.

He steadied me by my chin, seduced me with a long gaze from his brilliant steel-blue eyes, and kissed me soundly, wrapping me in the comforting shroud of his affection and his raw power.

I tried to return the kiss to the best of my ability, but to be sure I was putty in his passionate arms. I melted under his influence, and lost all sense of time, balance, and thought. He directed our mouths, and as in all other things, I was swept away in following him. It was a gift to feel him so intimately, to brush against his substantive skin and breathe the palpable scent of his Sullivan smoke, when not long ago all I’d had of him was his low voice. Raffles was more than merely a little good to me, I thought. Raffles was the best of men.

As pleasant as the kiss was, it couldn’t last forever, not while the game waited to be finished. Raffles gently pulled away, flashing his sly eyelashes at me as he did so. “Come, Bunny,” Raffles said, as he fondly stroked my cheek. “We needn’t linger in this place. Let’s not forget, we still have the boodle to bundle. Then, it’s back to the Albany, where I’ll see if I can’t make up my coarse behaviour to you.”

Though the plunder he spoke of made very little difference to me at present, I saw that it mattered to him, and for his sake I wouldn’t forget it. Filled to the brim with loyalty and affection for him and him alone, I nodded. I took up my bamboo stick, which threw haphazard light all about me, and he, the dark lantern, which penetrated sharply into the darkness. 

We ventured together further into the darkness, me at Raffles’s heel and Raffles without a trace of hesitance or fear, to discover what prize awaited us for all our trouble.

The chamber we were inside of was not barren in the manner of the cells that had led to it. For one thing, its filthiness and stench were tenfold as offensive. There were also earthenware jars, some sealed and some not. There were rags in a pile to the side, and a couple of mats of straw. Six small chests were lined up to one side; upon inspection, five were essentially empty, but one was half-full of an eclectic assortment of bent trinkets, unpolished silverware, and jewellery. 

At the end of the chamber, an enormous monster of wood resembling a wide coffin sat. Above the menacing box, two black face masks dangled hauntingly from the same hook on the ceiling. Without so much as a flinch, Raffles approached the casket, and began to open the lid to shine his the concentrated beam of lantern inside, only to find the lid would not lift easily.

“Sealed tight,” Raffles said. “Makes one wonder if there’s anything valuable inside.”

“What—What is this thing?”

He smiled at me. “Don’t you know?”

I couldn’t speak. Whether I knew or not, I had to hear him say it.

“It’s exactly what it looks like: a coffin.” Jovially, he pointed his lantern at the two grimly hanging masks. “For two, apparently! That would explain the ungodly size of it. I say, to have masks like those, the lucky occupants must be a pair after our own hearts, don’t you agree?” Without letting go of his farcical attitude, he stepped away from the coffin. “Somehow, I don’t think I have it in me to crack open their crib.”

My tiki and I stood in front of the casket for a longer time. The sight of the masks, and the image in my head of the unseen skeletons that must be inside the enormous box underneath them, fascinated me dreadfully. My imagination painted the decomposed bodies in faded clothes, with the rotting bones of their hands clasped forever in each other’s. I stared and stared at the masks and the casket, transfixed by the incredible capacity of history to repeat itself. “This place is a tomb,” I murmured. 

Raffles’s heavy hand fell on my back from behind me. “Now, perhaps, you can see why I was reluctant to tell you all I suspected of this place,” he said in a serious tone. “I thought this might frighten you, if we ran into something of this character.”

True, it was a dismal kind of spectacle that was lying in front of us. On the other hand, there was something oddly peaceful and inspiring about it. I shook my head. “No. I’m not frightened.”

“Aren’t you? That’s a good rabbit!” Quick as lighting, Raffles was in his light-hearted mode again. “Of course, there’s really nothing to be frightened of, is there?”

Standing there, facing our enigmatic precursors while at Raffles’s familiar side, I let myself be a sentiment fool for a little while. “No,” I agreed, “nothing to be frightened of. It’s only two nameless thieves, who wanted to be buried at home, together.” While I looked at the casket, I took Raffles’s hand in mine. 

He didn’t mock me, and I’ll never be able to repay him enough for it. His grip was strong and sure. We tarried for a fair while, admiring our forerunners. I wished I had brought something, anything—that candle from earlier, maybe—to leave as a sign of our good will at their admirable feet. As it was, I had nothing to give them. They wanted nothing from us, but to be left alone, and respected from a distance.

I could have stayed there staring at the massive box even longer, but Raffles couldn’t keep his attention from other matters indefinitely. He came to life again with a burst. “If we’re done admiring the pretty craftsmanship,” he joked half-sincerely, “we still have a job to do. Be a chap and help me pocket some of these jewels.” Raffles walked away, to plunder the sixth chest. 

My brow shot up. “What?” I spun, astonished. This dungeon had become a sacred, inviolable shelter in my mind, and it amazed me that Raffles would dare to diminish it. “You’re taking from these people?”

“Ah!” he laughed kindly. “And here is the other reason why I was so reluctant to tell all to you! My dear Bunny, your sympathy is showing itself. You’re having second thoughts over a couple of skeletons.” 

I grimaced, torn between his logic and my emotions. Yes, they were only skeletons, but it didn’t seem right to me to abuse a couple of thieves so much like ourselves. “But these people—we can’t steal from them!”

Raffles, amused, put his hands on his hips. “It might not be stealing,” he countered playfully. “They could be old wedding favours, or welcome presents, for fellows like us—that is, fellows who understand the hosts well enough not to bother with the casket while they burgle the place. Any pair of burglars who pushed on into their den would have to understand their feelings about wanting to stick together, you know, after finishing that little teamwork challenge of theirs!”

My eyes widened. I hadn’t made that connection in my mind before. He had said it in such a tone of jest, yet the abrupt insight was blinding. Raffles was right; that ludicrous puzzle we’d solved on the way in wasn’t pointless after all. It was a deliberate exercise in teamwork, designed to prune out the untrustworthy and to prime the rest with thoughts of trust and partnership. It struck me as a surprisingly clever setup. The couple inside the casket could never be split asunder by any group of intruders who experienced the same sensations that Raffles and I had undergone when we had shared our eyes, hands, minds, and hearts as one unity.

“Or, who knows?” Raffles went on. “Who’s to say the chest doesn’t belong to us?” For a moment, there was a distant, pensive look in his eyes. “You don’t believe in the transmigration of souls, do you, Bunny?”

I don’t know what I would have said, if I had had time to realise what incredible theory he was proposing off-handedly. He hurried past his own question before I grasped it. 

“No, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t want to leave nothing for the next pair of our stamp who saunters in. I’ll only take a small something or other to remember the occasion by.” He pocketed a small amulet from the chest. “Here, this has a fetching Eastern look about it, doesn’t it? Well, if you’re not going to help yourself to any of the wedding favours, Bunny, we’re finished here. Send me all the dice I gave you through the channel in the wall, when you get to it. I suspect we won’t be allowed to leave without replacing them.”

I hesitated to move. There was one more piece I had to say to Raffles, before we left the dungeon for good. “Wait, Raffles,” I said. “I’ve been thinking.” 

He and his lantern’s beam were already on his way to the path that was entrance. He paused, and turned his neck to me. “Yes?”

“That subject you touched on earlier, about your name being derived from a dice game?”

“What of it?”

“It’s pure nonsense.”

“Oh? Are you sure?”

“Yes. Your ancestors had nothing to do with games of chance. They were simply as raffish as you are!”

“Raffish?” He flashed me a charming smirk. “As in, dashing?”

I crossed my arms dramatically. “As in, misbehaved!”

Raffles laughed warmly. “Then twice tonight, I find myself to be proof that history repeats itself!” he quipped spritely, and I failed to carry out the stoic expression of long-suffering tolerance that was the only proper counter.

On the way out, the air was all right. The darkness wasn’t bothersome. I didn’t tremble once.

End.


End file.
